Full in-depth review including the story and mechanics didn't fit into steam at all.
https://milkandhate.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/earth-defense-force-iron-rain/

The vanilla game is set up as terrible as everything from japan. I searched for FoV fixes and i think i ended up using the mod from this (https://gtm.you1.cn/app/1039890/discussions/0/2270321250022100805/?ctp=5) topic. It ended up being quite fiddly for me (the dawg i forced to play the game with me got it working on the second try unlike me), it often crashes the game on the first launch, but hey, it works. I got proper UHD rendering and injected a ton of FoV to play on my giant monitor. So yeah after tinkering it renders good, even if in borderless mode.

So the game requires 3rd party mods to run on modern screens and to have proper FoV. There are no dual binds or multiple binds in the controls. The game doesn’t run very good. On 10900k\\32 RAM\\GF1080 the game was struggling most of the time a godzilla attacks, dropping the fps below 1. And that even after i dropped my setting to low. Options are pretty weak and several important things are buried in the wrong menus. But most of the time it runs more or less okay. The menus are pretty bad and uncomfortable. In the customization instead of having one item and picking its colour, you have eight different copies of the same item. In usable items instead of picking an item and picking an amount you gonna carry, you have separate amounts as separate items. The loading animations change depending on the story events, that’s cool.

Chikyū Bōeigun always has a small roster of maps, but usually they are so big and get destroyed to different degrees so you don’t notice it until pretty far in the game. It feels like Iron Rain has even fewer maps, and the missions are very short. If you have proper weaponry with sufficient power you are done in less than 10 minutes. And there are only ~50 stages. Since you are playing with weapons you have and not the level-optimal loadout it will take more time than that and the game doesn’t feel too short. But still, the scale of battles and the amount of enemies is much bigger in the last mainline games. Oh, and enemy variety is probably smaller. If you go to the last battle geared for a regular map you will waste probably an entire hour shooting the boss. He has a ridiculous amount of HP. But if you actually decide to have a risky but specialist build you can be finished in ~2 minutes.

Mainline CB games can learn a lot from this. For example that stunlocks are bad. And that stunlocks are bad. But best of all that not having to farm the same stupid boxes for 1\\8th of an HP is amazing. Just outright buying 10000 HP and be done with it and playing the harder difficulties, instead of running normal for boxes until you want to gauge your eyes out and still instantly dying on hard. Unlocking the guns per level instead of stupid boxes is great! But the shop should just go, and so are the gems. If you unlocked it you get it. Not only it removes the stupid grind but allows you to actually try the guns. But the stupid random boxes of the mainline games are still pure cancer, even gems are better than that. Customization is great, having one healthbar for every class is great. This is the best fencer i played even if it has the same weapons as others. Mainline fencer weapons should be less bad.
So. Playing the main campaign and DLC, playing it on disaster is all truly great despite the stunlocks. But going for achievements was a giant chore. Achievements take about 100 hours of thankless grind, mostly of the same one map to get more credits. At least they are all in working condition.

audio version
https://youtu.be/Thqz2vOhyg4

This is the best game called XCOM.

Tʜᴇʏ ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ᴄᴀʟʟ ᴍᴇ ᴇɴꜰᴏʀᴄᴇʀ ꜰᴏʀ ɴᴏᴛʜɪɴɢ

The tragedy of X-COM: Enforcer is not that it is a third-person shooter for kids within the turn-based IP of UFO. The tragedy is that it is not UFO enough. When i saw it in the store i was actually excited to wear UFO armours and use UFO weapons to shoot UFO enemies inside UFO levels. But no, you play as a fan-fiction robot and use fan-fiction guns. The landed saucer map is the closest thing to what i wanted. The enemies only somewhat resemble the original cast, and the game takes place in a separate universe. Because, it turns out, this is not based on UFO, it is an attempt to recycle another failed game. X-COM: Alliance was a weird attempt at The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, but on the 90s tech with the terrible 90s AI.

Dɪᴇ ᴀʟɪᴇɴ sᴄᴜᴍ

I liked the game as a kid. But then i got old and got the internet and discovered that people do not share my equal enthusiasm for UFO and Enforcer. Under peer pressure i started to consider the game to be just okay. But now after seeing what Gollop did in Apocalypse, what the garbage new publisher did with XCOM: Enforcer 2 and with that visual novel for tablets, and after finally finishing this whole game (arguably twice) i see the truth.

I’ᴍ ᴏɴ ꜰɪʀᴇ

This is exactly how i remembered the game. It’s one of those 2000s wacky action games akin to MDK2, FAKK2, Serious Sam 2 etc. It’s wacky, and with cool fun guns, and some weird mechanics. In this case it’s the mouse controls. You can use it separately from the camera. Or you can not do that, and play it more like a 3rd person Doom, than Quake.

You just run forward and absolutely positively enforce all the ♥♥♥♥ out of all the ♥♥♥♥ up. Chef’s kiss.

You can unlock more skins and swap them. You collect the currency and unlock and upgrade the guns, the character, and the bonuses that can drop on the levels.

There’s the combo-metre, and i think it increases the drop-rate of the bonuses. The game is absolute maximum carnage.

There are hidden letters B O N U S on each level. If you find them all, after finishing the level you will be sent to a bonus stage, where you can get even more currency. There’s a weird frogger mini-game, and i never could get anything out of it. There’s a pacman; there’s something like a perestroika; and others.

The easy difficulty makes the things go boom harder, and it is better for playing with all the guns, but it has no last chapter. On the medium difficulty you’d better not to unlock any guns but the best ones. Since the guns spawn from the entire unlocked pool, you will be getting a lot of trash like the grenade launcher or the freeze gun. Even on the last levels of easy the flamethrower and the shotgun were barely dealing any damage. But with the limited pool the only weak gun you will be getting is the flamethrower. 66% of the drops will be the Nukers and the PSI-Cannons.

Gᴇᴛ ᴏꜰꜰ ᴍʏ ᴘʟᴀɴᴇᴛ

Initially i wanted to say that Enforcer is the second best game called XCOM, after Terror. But now i say that this is the best game called XCOM. And it is the second best game in the whole IP, right after UFO.

Yᴏᴜ’ᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴇɴꜰᴏʀᴄᴇᴅ